Grief
by Summer Sunrises
Summary: "Grief doesn't change a person. It reveals them." - John Green, TFiOS. The tears wouldn't fall. They just wouldn't. It wasn't as if they were sitting idly in her eyes; they didn't exist. No tears were shed by Kim Crawford when her sister, Cassidy, was lost forever. But, like everyone else, she has emotions. And so she shattered. One-shot. A smidgen of Kick, with T for sadness.


_All who would win joy, must share it; happiness was born a twin. ~Lord Byron_

* * *

A church ceremony was not something that Kim expected for a Crawford funeral. She had always imagined a garden ceremony, with all of the person's friends sitting around the casket, bawling their eyes out.

But no, her parent's had insisted on a church funeral. It was like she wasn't even there when they made the decision; they completely ignored her.

So she looked down at the coffin at the girl inside, whose long, flowing blonde hair cascaded in ringlets down her sides, and whose brown eyes, hidden beneath her lids, would never see the light of day again. The girl was identical to her, but that was no surprise.

It was Cassidy, her twin sister.

"Kim, honey, step away from your sister… it's starting…" her mother called from the stands, wiping her red, puffy eyes with a tissue. Kim nodded numbly, taking long strides to reach her sobbing mother.

Kim's face remained stone cold, not a tear being shed from her eyes. She looked at her father, now, who had his face in his hands, his eyes bloodshot and swollen. This came as no surprise, though. Cassidy was his little sunshine.

She was _everyone's _little sunshine.

People started to fill into the small, overcrowded church, wiping their eyes and giving their 'greatest condolences'. Kim would nod, unemotional, before shaking their hands politely and waiting for the next person to come. The cycle went on for about fifteen minutes before she met the eyes of her friends, the Wasabi Warriors.

Milton was the first to come up. "Kim… I can't… I'm so… sorry for your loss." he gave her a hug before shuffling back into the third row.

Jerry was next, his eyes solemn. "Kim, yo… I don't… I'm so sorry, man…" he, too, gave her a hug before shuffling next to Milton.

Eddie was the third to come up. "Kim, I can't believe it… I'm so sorry…" he trailed off, looking at her face, an inspection for any emotions to be found. There were none. He shuffled off as well.

Jack was the last to approach Kim, his eyes laden with unshed tears. He didn't even say anything, which she was thankful for, just gathered her into a long, lingering embrace. _I wonder what he's hugging me for,_ she thought, _I'm not the one who's dead._

After he walked back to the third row, the ceremony commenced. It was long, boring, and many of the things said about her twin were vastly untrue. But this was to be expected, was it not?

She sat there numbly, almost tuning out the long, droning speech that the minister was delivering.

It wasn't as if she wasn't sad about her sister's death – somewhere on the inside, she was sure she was – but rather that she didn't comprehend it. No, Cassidy was not dead. She had not been hit by a drunk driver. Kim would wake up in the morning and she would be in their room, talking with her friends at an annoyingly loud volume, just as she always did.

She couldn't be dead. It wasn't possible.

As the ceremony ended and the crowd – almost three hundred people – faltered and left the church to go to the Crawford residence for an after-ceremony brunch, Kim lingered in her seat, trying to remember how to move her legs.

"Kim?" said a voice from behind her. She didn't have to look up to know it was Jack. It was always Jack these days…

She turned to look at him, her face blank, void of any feeling. "Yes?"

He opened his mouth to answer, closed it again, and in one motion scooped her up in his arms and carried her out the doors of the church. She stared into the distance, her eyes vast and blank.

* * *

The next few days were cautious, test-out-the-waters days in which Kim barely spoke a word, only opening her mouth to speak when she was called on by the teachers, and even then those opportunities were scarce.

This day, exactly four days after the funeral, seemed no different whatsoever. It contained Kim, slipping through the day, just as she did nowadays. But this was the day she snapped.

It started when she got to school.

"Hey, Kim," said a boy she didn't know, "how are you?"

"Good. Thanks." was her automated response, and she walked passed him without another word.

Classes, that day, were ever so boring, with teachers droning on about whatever the according subject was. She barely even spared them glances, looking up from her veil of golden locks just enough to see a diagram or two on the board.

Kim's classmates were increasingly nice to her, unsurprisingly, and whenever she would come in contact with one, maybe an accidental bump of the shoulder or touch of the hand, they would look annoyed, and then see it was Kim, and then their eyes would widen to saucers and their mouths would open to a perfect _O_ and they would apologize profusely, and she would walk away without responding. Normally, she would feel guilty about this, but that was the thing:

She couldn't feel anything anymore.

As the day dragged on, everything seemed as though it would go without change.

That was, of course, until sixth period rolled around. Or, rather – the time in between fifth and sixth period.

Kim walked numbly – a perpetual state at this point – to her locker, flanked by the Wasabi Warriors, who would just about follow her everywhere, whether it be to class or to karate.

As she walked she saw a flash of blonde hair, and, unconsciously, assumed it to be Cassidy. _Oh wait,_ she thought, _Cassidy's dead._

And then it hit her, like a ton of bricks:

_Cassidy's dead._

The world started to spin around her and all of the air inhabiting Kim's body disappeared and was seemingly replaced by small knives, stabbing at her insides. She paled visibly and fell to her knees, letting out the most bloodcurdling, most heartbroken scream of her life.

Jack tensed and surged forward to help her, but Milton stuck his arm out and solemnly shook his head, letting the whole thing play out. "Don't," he whispered, "let her be. She needs this."

Insignificant, meaningless thoughts were throwing themselves at Kim, pounding on her skull and making her eyes water. _I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO!_ Her mind screamed at her, _CASSIDY'S DEAD, I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO ANYMORE!_ She frantically ran her hands through her hair, eyes wide and staring down at the ground.

The sobs came like waves to a storm in the ocean; crashing down on her, one immediately after another, leaving her gasping for breath and wailing for _someone to help her_.

Her hands then grabbed fitfully at her golden locks, as if trying to pull herself up from the drowning that she was going through _without anybody noticing_. "_Cassidy!"_ She wailed, "_come BACK!"_ there was now a puddle of tears both on her lap and on the floor, soaking through her legs but in no way giving her relief.

The notion that such a young, wonderful girl could be _dead_ was a foreign concept to Kim. _She had so much to live for, _she thought, _she still had to graduate high school, for Christ's sake!_

Kim hiccupped as she thought of the day – now impossible – when her dad would walk his favorite little girl down the isle, and beams as she takes the hand of her fiancée, and is about to kiss him…

Kim screamed in frustration as she acknowledged that Cassidy would never be able to have these momentous events, she would never be able to fall in love, to graduate college…

The other occupants of the main hallway to Seaford High stared on at the outburst, unmoving. A few looked surprised at her sudden wave of emotion, but most just observed Kim with sadness, as if they had been waiting for this since the funeral.

She was just a ticking time bomb in their minds; she would explode suddenly, after a period of deathly, eerie silence. And that's exactly what she did.

_Cassidy's dead_, that thought would not stop running through her head, as much as she told it not to. _Cassidy's dead Cassidy's dead Cassidy's dead CASSIDY'S DEAD CASSIDY'S DEAD CASSIDY'S DEAD I'M NOT A TWIN ANYMORE CASSIDY'S DEAD I HAVE NO ONE CASSIDY'S DEAD WHY DIDN'T I DIE INSTEAD._

Suddenly, she felt two strong arms wrap around her shaking frame, muscles rippling as they carried her to the courtyard. For the second time that week, Jack had picked her up. She sobbed into his shoulder, soaking his shirt. He didn't seem to care.

"S-she's gone, Jack," Kim mumbled without looking up, "she's gone. I'll never see my sister again."

She could feel him nod, tears streaming down his face as well. "But she loved you, and you loved her, and you'll never forget her."

Kim shook her head in agreement as he tenderly kissed her hair. "B-but I miss her, Jack…"

"I know, Kim," she couldn't see this, but he was looking up to the skies, eyes filled with tears. "I know."

* * *

**So… there it was! I know, I thought it was sad, but my inspiration for this was the fact that I have a twin sister, and I think this would be my reaction if she ever died.**

** Please review; I really like this story, and it would make me feel so great to know that you did, too. Tell me what you think!**

**I hope you (the reader) read all of it, because I think every paragraph was important. But that's just me. :) **

**Author's note: I know that at the funeral, Kim was all like, 'I'm not the one who's dead' and then at the school, I said she realized that Cassidy was dead, and I think some people might get confused by this, so I'm going to explain: **

**I think she needed to have a _fundamental_ knowledge of Cassidy's death, like, she couldn't be at the funeral and go, "Why are people in black? Why is Cassidy sleeping in a box?" She needed to know that she was dead. Know, yes, but not comprehend. She didn't understand the fact that her sister was dead. This story is the explanation of that realization.**

**I REALLY hope you enjoyed reading this, and please review! **


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